Chapter Text
There's a hand grabbing roughly at your neck.
Your room lights up with the splendor of a thousand suns. Your mouth tastes like ozone and rot. Someone is rummaging through your closet.
You hiss, squinting, and your gaze falls upon one of many military-issued malignancies to your life.
"Kaeya," you hiss, "what the fuck."
He's holding you up—one handed, mind you—by the back of your shirt, letting your blankets fall limply back onto the bed. Thank Barbatos you actually wore pajamas to sleep last night—actually. On second thought, you should've flashed the bastard. Maybe he'd stop breaking into your room at ungodly hours of the night. You want to give him a broken nose. You sincerely doubt that you'd ever be able to break his nose martially, but you were a medical professional. You'd drug his coffee. You'd slip a potion into his wine. You'd—
It's around this time that you realize that Kaeya has broken into your room at 3:19 am, dressed in full uniform, with a thrum of tension that tightens the skin around his uncovered eye. You tilt your head to look behind him; Sucrose, because of course she's awake, when is she not, is pulling your uniform out of storage, presumably so you don't end up facing down Jean in your bedclothes, bless her heart. You're going to give her half of your next paycheck.
"Good morning," Kaeya chirps, now that you've joined him in the plane of the living. You mentally confirm that something is wrong, because instead of mocking you about the rather obvious collection of hickeys at the base of your neck, he's examining your wall decor with all the enthusiasm of a teenage boy at the flea. He notices you noticing this, however, and drops you back onto your bed in retaliation; you groan and obstinately dig your face back into your sheets.
You can, quite literally, feel his resulting eye-roll. What a cunt. He says, "We need you downstairs, Sparky. There's been a new delivery."
That gets you moving, at least. You roll over onto your front, staring up at your ceiling in dismay. Maybe, if you prayed hard enough, Barbatos would blow the roof straight off, and hopefully take Kaeya’s head with it. If you were truly blessed, it might blow you all the way to Mare Jivari, where you’d never have to work another day in your life. Unfortunately, your god has abandoned you, because Kaeya is now looking at the pile of laundry that’s gone back-and-forth from your bed to your chair for about a week like a dog that just pissed on the carpet.
Ugh. Ughhhh. What an absolute drag.
Sucrose, like the angel that she is, lays your uniform out on your bed while Kaeya stomps out into the hallway to wait. Her mouth wobbles into a sheepish, apologetic-yet-supportive smile, and she scurries out of your room, gently shutting the door behind her.
If the Knights found it necessary to wake you specifically, this deep into the night, and send one of their Captains to do it, then you admit that something might actually be wrong. From the way Kaeya phrased it—delivery, how utterly classless of him—a suspicious body had probably washed up somewhere, and they were about to make it your problem.
Mysterious ailments of the body and mind had been your problem for years, now. If the Church’s healers couldn’t handle something, the unspoken solution was to put said problem in front of you, run away crying from the creepy Dead Body Knight, pray, and come back a day later, assuming that you had successfully black-magicked the wrongness away. They didn’t trust your methods—perhaps rightfully so—but they trusted your results.
Being useful was an element of survival, after all. It didn’t matter that you were a Knight of Favonius in the same way that tomatoes were fruits. Powerful people had expectations of you, now. You’re pretty sure there’s a bard out there calling you the Grim Reaper. How exhausting.
You pull on your uniform and fasten your vision firmly to your body. As you pull on your boots, you spare a defeated glance to your reflection in the mirror. You didn’t have time to brush your hair; it’s sticking up rather unattractively in three cardinal directions. You didn’t even have time to brush your teeth. You are going to give Kaeya and Jean a mouthful of your morning breath. You will have your revenge.
Taking a moment to yourself, you close your eyes and expand your senses through the barracks. Sure enough, the three of you are the only ones awake on the entire floor; the other Knights are fast asleep, their energies thrumming low against your nerves.
You step out into the barracks hallway and shut the heavy wooden door behind you. You don’t bother with the lock this time, because any knight determined enough could get past it anyways, and you don’t have the energy to spare on the frivolity after such a rude awakening. Kaeya notes this detail, of course, because he somehow notices everything, and his lips twitch in amusement.
If he didn’t tower over you, you’d punch him right in the eyepatch. You want to tell him to go cook himself in Daudapa Gorge’s hilichurl pot or jump off the edge of Starsnatch Cliff. Unfortunately, he is your superior, albeit an indirect one. What comes out of your mouth is, “What’s the situation, Captain?”
Interestingly enough, Kaeya defers his piece of the report. Probably because he’s a lazy bastard. “Sucrose,” he prompts, making the girl briefly trip over her own feet in surprise. “Repeat what you told me, please.”
She recovers quickly enough. “W-well,” Sucrose begins, adjusting her glasses, “About an hour ago, I was organizing my research in the lower level of the library when the doors slammed open. I was so surprised that I dropped all of my notes, but, um—”
Ever-fond of dramatics, Kaeya cuts in.
“Lohen brought you a body,” he says, voice flat.
Well. That certainly changed things.